A web host reseller musings

Web hosting is a crucial part of making money online. If you’re thinking of starting a money-making blog or website, you can’t do it without a quality web host provider. Things to keep in mind when choosing a best web hosting company are: space requirements; reliability issues; technical support; functionality; email or web mail addresses; add-ons and subdomains; and potential for growth. This article aims to cover all these important issues so that you’ll be better prepared in your search for a best web hosting .

1. How much disk space and bandwidth you need are important factors. You want as much as possible of both. Disk storage space is where you will store your website or blog’s files. Most sites, especially in the beginning, won’t need much more than 5 – 10 MB of web disk storage space.

Bandwidth is what is required to serve up your files and pages to your visitors. A moderately visited website won’t require much more than 200 MB. For example, I have one website that is 75 pages and gets about 100 visitors a day. It uses 7 MB of disk storage space, and around 100 MB of bandwidth per month.

2. You want a hosting provider that can be trusted to serve your web pages at all times. This is known as “Up Time.” Look for providers that guarantee 99.9% up time. If they can’t guarantee that much, then keep looking. There are plenty of companies that do.

3. Technical support is extremely important. Look for companies that offer support via email, chat, and/or toll-free telephone 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week.

4. Your web host should offer FTP, MySQL and PHP at a minimum. This will allow you to build regular static websites and blogs and upload files of all sizes.

5.Your host should offer at least one webmail or email account. This will allow you to have your domain name in the email address. It is very important for a legitimate looking website. Many hosting companies offer unlimited email accounts.

6. Do you plan on building more than one website? Then you’ll want to choose a company that will allow you to have add-on domains or at least subdomains. Add-ons will allow you to add separate domains to the same account. Subdomains are just added to your existing domain name. For example, a subdomain of weightlossguide.com might be fitness.weightlossguide.com.

7. Will there be room for growth? If your website gets bigger and/or you decide to build more websites, does this company offer larger plans that you can easily move into without much trouble? This is very important and you should always give yourself plenty of flexibility for the future.

In conclusion, cheaper is not always better when it comes to web hosting. Check reviews online and try to find the pros and cons of any company that you’re considering using. Call, chat or email their technical support to see how fast the response time is. Because, trust me, you’ll be using it more than you might imagine.

If at all possible, when first signing up, don’t sign up for over a month’s worth of service (3 months tops). You should take them for a test drive and switch if you’re not satisfied. Many hosts offer a money-back guarantee – so this isn’t as much of an issue.